Held every year since 1136 without interruption, the On-Matsuri moves the Wakamiya deity at midnight on 16 December, in complete darkness and silence, to a temporary shrine built of green branches — spectators are asked not to use lights and the priests carry the deity screened by cloth.
The following day, performing arts that have been kept for the god rather than for an audience are given in front of that shrine: bugaku court dance, dengaku, sarugaku, noh and kagura, in a single continuous programme that is effectively a live catalogue of eight hundred years of Japanese performance.
UNESCO inscribed it in 2022 as part of Fūryū-odori.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
The dates are fixed at 15–18 December. It is cold, long, and almost entirely unmarketed.
PlanningFixed on 15–18 December and unbroken since 1136; the deity is moved at midnight on the sixteenth.
Dates
computed from the rule
Computed from the recurrence rule we record for this entry, not copied from a listing. A date marked ~ comes from a calendar conversion and the observance may fall a day or two either side.